Have you seen what’s going on in the Philippines? They’re trying to impeach the vice-president — again — and there was even a shootout in the senate building. It’s time to chat with journalist Erin Cook, who specialises in South-East Asia. And as always we talk about a lot of different things.
Erin produces the excellent newsletter Dari Mulut ke Mulut, an English-language summary of what’s happening in the region, and an occasional newsletter specifically on the Australia-Indonesia relationship, Flat White, Kopi Susu.
In this episode we talk about those high-level political dramas in the Philippines. But we also chat about the oil crisis and its affect on the region, scam compounds in Myanmar, the history of physics for some reason, Thaksin Shinawatra out on parole, the exciting world of Memorandum of Understanding 44, and much more.
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Episode Links
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Following Southeast Asia and Timor-Leste, mostly elections, FP and Instagram posts. Don't complain to me that I don't cover business enough, I do not know of such things.
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Erin Cook's newsletter covering South-East Asia, but in June 2025 it's moving to Substack.
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Erin Cook's newsletter covering South-East Asia, this being its new home from June 2025.
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Erin Cook's other newsletter, specifically about the Australia-Indonesia relationship.
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[24 April 2026] Heavy reliance on imported energy leaves the region exposed to disruptions, driving inflation across food, transport and agriculture. In the region’s least developed countries, weak safety nets and rising import costs are compounding the impact, with farmers facing higher fuel and fertiliser prices and some reducing production.
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[29 April 2026] The Hormuz crisis has exposed Southeast Asia’s structural energy vulnerabilities, turning external disruption into region-wide economic stress
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This pioneering celebration of Thai pop and streetlife reflects the dramatic changes in Thailand as it modernised. With a contemporary eye and two decades” experience, the author delves beyond the Thai clichés to reveal the casual, everyday expressions of Thainess that so delight and puzzle, from floral truck bolts and taxi altars to buffalo cart furniture and drinks in bags.
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[11 May 2026] The Anutin cabinet makes major moves
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On January 3, 2025, Chinese actor Wang Xing (Chinese: ??; pinyin: Wáng X?ng) was kidnapped by a Myanmar-based fraud group and forced to work in a scam center. Wang travelled to Bangkok from Shanghai after being offered a fake acting role, and was transported to Myawaddy. Following legal action and a viral social media campaign by Wang's girlfriend Jiajia (Chinese: ??; pinyin: Ji?ji?), Chinese and Thai authorities co-launched an investigation into his search and rescue. Wang was ultimately found four days later.
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[4 February 2026] The room in the abandoned Cambodian scam compound bears the familiar logos of the Australian Federal Police on its walls, and its desk is bookended by two Australian flags.
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[8 September 2025] In the Indo-Pacific, Myanmar is emerging as a haven for transnational organised crime outfits. This industry has now grown to such a scale that it poses a significant international threat to countries well beyond the footprint of other elements of the Burmese crisis.
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[18 September 2025] In lawless regions of the Myanmar-Thai border, compounds run by Chinese criminal gangs contain thousands of people forced to scam strangers online or face brutal punishment. Thailand has become a key transit hub for trafficking victims, Reuters found. [I've linked to this previously and I recommend it.]
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[6 May 2026] Japan hits up Jakarta and Manila, Singapore has a think about WP and a Myanmar Update
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[12 May 2026] Scrapping MoU 44 in favour of Law of the Sea framework offers greater certainty.
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The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), also called the Law of the Sea Convention or the Law of the Sea Treaty, is an international treaty that establishes a legal framework for all marine and maritime activities. As of October 2024, 169 sovereign states and the European Union are parties. The United States is among the states that have not ratified the treaty.
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The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) is an international maritime treaty which sets out minimum safety standards in the construction, equipment and operation of merchant ships. The International Maritime Organization convention requires signatory flag states to ensure that ships flagged by them comply with at least these standards.
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The Timor Gap Treaty was formally known as the Treaty between Australia and the Republic of Indonesia on the zone of cooperation in an area between the Indonesian province of East Timor and Northern Australia. It was a bilateral treaty between the governments of Australia and Indonesia, which provided for the joint exploitation of petroleum and hydrocarbon resources in a part of the Timor Sea Seabed. The treaty was signed on 11 December 1989 and came into force on 9 February 1991.
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[30 March 2026] After being denied fuel, a Thai man live-streamed the moment he showed station staff an occupied coffin to prove his urgent need
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[31 March 2026] After being denied fuel, a Thai man live-streamed the moment he showed station staff an occupied coffin to prove his urgent need.
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[11 May 2026] Vice President Sara Duterte is impeached for a second time on Monday, May 11, after 255 lawmakers from the House of Representatives vote in favor of the committee report, effectively sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate.
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[12 May 2026] How much political news can we city produce in an eight-hour work day?
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[11 May 2026] The case against the vice-president stemmed from her alleged misuse of public funds and public threats against Marcos, his wife and his cousin, the former House speaker.
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The siege of Marawi (Filipino: Pagkubkob sa Marawi), also known as the Marawi crisis (Krisis sa Marawi) and the Battle of Marawi (Labanan sa Marawi), was a five-month-long armed conflict in Marawi, Philippines, that started on May 23, 2017, between Philippine government security forces against militants affiliated with the Islamic State (IS), including the Maute and Abu Sayyaf Salafi jihadist groups. The battle also became the longest urban battle in the modern history of the Philippines.
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[27 November 2026] The lessons learned by the Armed Forces of the Philippines in the Battle of Marawi, fighting a determined, ruthless enemy, are invaluable to the Australian Army.
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Ronald Marapon dela Rosa (born January 21, 1962), known by his nickname Bato, is a Filipino politician, fugitive, and retired police officer who has served as a senator of the Philippines since 2019. He served under the Duterte administration as the chief of the Philippine National Police (PNP) from July 1, 2016, to April 19, 2018, overseeing the government's war on drugs... Dela Rosa is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague for crimes against humanity due to his involvement in the drug war during the administration of Rodrigo Duterte, who was arrested in March 2025 and is currently detained at The Hague.
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[14 May 2026] Senator Ronald dela Rosa has escaped the Philippine Senate, where he had been holed up since Monday after shots were fired in the building... Police in the Philippines are investigating whether the shooting was instigated to help Senator dela Rosa escape.
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26. Philippines vows to hand fugitive senator to ICC following shootout | Politics News | Al Jazeera[15 May 2026] Senator Ronald ‘Bato’ dela Rosa wanted for alleged role as top enforcer in ex-president Duterte’s deadly drug war.
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[17 May 2026] The Office of the Solicitor-General has urged the Supreme Court (SC) to reject the legal maneuvers of Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, branding the senator a “fugitive from justice” who is manipulating the legal system to evade an international arrest warrant
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[15 May 2026] From a “monumental blunder,” to a case of the powerful shielding its own, the great Senate escape of Senator Bato dela Rosa has been called many things. Our newsroom and contributing experts have been hard at work piecing together the facts and timeline of events, contemplating the implications of this debacle, and battling the barrage of disinformation.
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[16 May 2026] Vietnam’s To Lam is a man in a hurry. Since claiming the nation’s top job, its most powerful leader in decades has been in near-constant motion, pressing flesh and signing deals in Beijing, Washington, Pyongyang and Moscow.
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[24 April 2026] Gotrade News - Indonesia will import 150 million barrels of Russian crude oil through the end of 2026. The volume is equivalent to roughly half the country's annual fuel consumption.
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[18 April 2026] In an extremely volatile market, Australia continues to ship gas offshore at low, fixed rates, while Japan on-sells it at a profit. As domestic prices rise and supply tightens, the consequences of this not-so-great deal are landing at home. So how did one of the world’s largest gas exporters end up with so little flexibility?
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Sir Marcus Laurence Elwin Oliphant (8 October 1901 – 14 July 2000) was an Australian physicist and humanitarian who played an important role in the first experimental demonstration of nuclear fusion and in the development of nuclear weapons.
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Sir William Henry Bragg (2 July 1862 – 12 March 1942) was a British X-ray crystallographer who uniquely shared a Nobel Prize with his son Lawrence Bragg – the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics "for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by means of X-rays," an important step in the development of X-ray crystallography.
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The Australian genius who developed radar and showed Oppenheimer how to build the bomb.
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[24 August 1946] At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.
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[I described this image as a Cold War poster, but it turns out to have been from WW2.]
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[2 May 2026] This world tour now takes us to Myanmar, where Aung San Suu Kyi will serve the remainder of her sentence under house arrest, following a decision by the head of the ruling junta, now acting as president. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate had until now been held in an undisclosed location.
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[4 May 2026] Myanmar democratic leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was abruptly moved from Naypyitaw Prison to a specially built secure house in Naypyitaw on the final day of the Thingyan water festival on April 16, The Irrawaddy has learned. The house is in a neighborhood for military families and surrounded by high fences.
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Thingyan, also known as the Myanmar New Year, is a festival that usually occurs in the middle of April. Thingyan marks the transition from the old year to the new one, based on the traditional Myanmar lunisolar calendar.
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Naypyidaw (/?ne?pj?d??/ NAYP-yid-aw), officially romanised as Nay Pyi Taw (NPT), is the capital and third-largest city of Myanmar. The city is located at the centre of the Naypyidaw Union Territory... The city, previously known only as Pyinmana District, officially replaced Yangon as the administrative capital of Myanmar on 6 November 2005; its official name was revealed to the public on Armed Forces Day, 27 March 2006.
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The Rohingya genocide is a series of ongoing persecutions and killings of the Muslim Rohingya people by the Tatmadaw (armed forces of Myanmar). The genocide has consisted of two phases to date: the first was a military crackdown that occurred from October 2016 to January 2017, and the second has been occurring since August 2017... Several countries consider these events ethnic cleansing.
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Return of the Junta is a detailed account of the ways that Myanmar's military – the Tamatdaw - has maintained control over its people despite a decade of supposed reform.
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[11 May 2026] Thailand's former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has been released from prison on parole. Thaksin had been serving a sentence over a corruption related charge. He once dominated Thai politics for a quarter century. And has been a main political rival of the country's pro-military, pro-royalty elite who view his politics as a threat to traditional social order.
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[11 May 2026] For a man who spent most of the past 20 years in exile, and the past eight months in jail, the figure of former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra still looms large over Thailand.
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Thaksin Shinawatra (Thai: ?????? ???????, RTGS: Thaksin Chinnawat [t?ák.s?n t???n.n?.wát]; born 26 July 1949) is a Thai former politician, businessman, and police officer who served as the 23rd prime minister of Thailand from 2001 until his overthrow in 2006. Since 2009 he has also been a citizen of Montenegro.
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Mahathir bin Mohamad (Jawi: ????? ?? ????; IPA: [mahað?(r) b?n mohamad]; born 10 July 1925) is a Malaysian politician, author and doctor who served as the fourth and seventh prime minister of Malaysia from 1981 to 2003 and again from 2018 to 2020. He was the country's longest-serving prime minister, serving for a cumulative total of 24 years.
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